“Each one has a heartbreaking story of loss and grief,” said Jonathan Crickx, spokesman for the UN children’s agency UNICEF in the Palestinian territories.
“This figure corresponds to 1 percent of the overall displaced population — 1.7 million people,” he told a media briefing in Geneva, via video-link from Jerusalem.
Crickx said that tracing who the children were was proving “extremely difficult,” as sometimes they were brought to a hospital where they may be wounded or in shock, and “they simply can’t even say their names.”
He said that during conflicts, it was common for extended families to take care of children who lost their parents.
However, in Gaza, “due to the sheer lack of food, water or shelter, extended families are themselves distressed and face challenges to immediately take care of another child as they themselves are struggling to cater for their own children and family,” said Crickx.
Broadly, UNICEF terms separated children as those who are without their parents, while unaccompanied children are those who are separated and also without other relatives.
He said the mental health of children in Gaza was being severely affected by the war.
“They present symptoms like extremely high levels of persistent anxiety, loss of appetite, they can’t sleep, they have emotional outbursts or panic every time they hear the bombings,” he explained.
Before the conflict erupted, UNICEF estimated that more than 500,000 children in the Gaza Strip needed mental health and psycho-social support.
Now it believes that “almost all children are in need” of such help — more than one million children, said Crickx.
“Children don’t have anything to do with this conflict. Yet they are suffering like no child should ever suffer,” said Crickx.
“No child should ever be exposed to the level of violence seen on Oct. 7 — or to the level of violence that we have witnessed since then.”
He called for a ceasefire so that UNICEF could conduct a proper count of children who are unaccompanied or separated, trace relatives, and deliver mental health support.
Displaced Gazans sheltering in a school courtyard in Rafah were resorting to desperate measures such as diluting baby milk powder in too much water or giving children one meal a day because there was not enough food to go around.
At the southern tip of Gaza, on the border with Egypt, the Rafah area was the only one in the whole of the Palestinian enclave to have received limited aid deliveries over the past four days, the UN humanitarian office said on Thursday.
But there was still not enough food for everyone and parents said their children were getting sick and losing weight.
Sitting on a mat in front of his family’s tent in a makeshift displacement camp, Zakaria Rehan held his baby boy, Yazan, and a feeding bottle with a small amount of liquid.
“This is basically water with a spoonful of powder, even less than a spoonful, anything so it just smells like milk, just so I can trick him into thinking it is milk so he can drink it,” said Rehan. “But it isn’t healthy, it doesn’t give him any nutrition.”
Rehan said all the families in the camp were facing a daily struggle to find food and a means to cook it. He said he had eaten raw beans from a can that came in an aid delivery because there was no fuel for a fire.
“Yes, there is aid that comes in, but it isn’t enough at all. It isn’t enough for all the families. You get a can of beans, or a can of meat, for 10 people. Even if one person was to eat this alone, it wouldn’t satiate him.”
Food shortages have been a problem throughout the two-month-old war between Israel and Hamas, but have worsened since the end of a week-long truce on Dec. 1 as the number of aid trucks entering from Egypt has fallen and distribution has been hindered by intense combat, including in southern Gaza.
ONLY MEAL OF THE DAY
In the mouth of another tent at the Rafah school camp, three children were eating rice out of a single pan. Their mother, Yosra Al-Deeb, said they would have nothing else for the rest of the day.
“The children sleep hungry and wake up hungry. I made them a meal, and that’s the only meal they eat in a day, the rest of the day they don’t eat,” she said, her anger and exhaustion showing in her face.
“At home, I used to feed them a nutritious meal, they never got sick. But here, they’re always sick, every day they have stomach flu,” she said.
In another part of the camp, Naji Shallah had chopped some tomatoes and a green pepper and was preparing to cook them in a small pan. He too said this would be his children’s only meal of the day.
“If I could find bread for my children, it would be like having a pound of gold,” he said, adding they were dehydrated from lack of food and water and that one of his sons had lost a lot of weight.
“And if I secure bread, I can only give my child half a loaf, because if he were to eat the whole loaf, he won’t eat the next day.”
The war began on Oct. 7 when Hamas militants rampaged through southern Israel, killing 1,200 people including babies and children and kidnapping 240 hostages of all ages, according to Israeli figures.
Vowing to destroy Hamas and free the hostages, Israel launched a military assault on Gaza that has killed more than 17,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.
UN humanitarian chief Volker Turk has described living conditions in the bombarded strip as “apocalyptic.”
Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas said Saturday that the United States was “responsible for the bloodshed” of children in the Gaza Strip after it vetoed a resolution calling for an immediate cease-fire in the Palestinian territory at a special meeting of the UN Security Council.
“The president has described the American position as aggressive and immoral, a flagrant violation of all humanitarian principles and values, and holds the United States responsible for the bloodshed of Palestinian children, women and elderly people in the Gaza Strip,” said a statement from Abbas’s office.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas on Friday called for an immediate end to the war in Gaza and an international peace conference to work out a lasting political solution leading to the establishment of a Palestinian state.
In an interview with Reuters at his office in Ramallah, Abbas, 87, said the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians in general had reached an alarming stage that requires an international conference and guarantees by world powers.
Besides Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza, he said Israeli forces have intensified their attacks everywhere in the occupied West Bank over the past year with settlers escalating violence against Palestinian towns.
He reiterated his longstanding position in favor of negotiation rather than armed resistance to end the longstanding occupation.
“I am with peaceful resistance. I am for negotiations based on an international peace conference and under international auspices that would lead to a solution that will be protected by world powers to establish a sovereign Palestinian state in the Gaza Strip, the West Bank and East Jerusalem,” he said.
Abbas was speaking as Israel increased its strikes on Gaza. In two months of warfare, it has killed more than 17,000 people, wounded 46,000 and forced the displacement of around 1.9 million people, over half of them now sheltering in areas in central Gaza or close to the Egyptian border.
A senior US official said the idea of an international conference had been discussed among different partners but the proposal was still at a very preliminary stage.
“It’s one of many options on the table that we and others would consider with an open mind, but no decision has been made about that,” the official said on condition of anonymity.
Israel launched its campaign to annihilate the Hamas movement that rules Gaza after Hamas fighters went on a rampage through Israeli towns on Oct. 7, killing 1,200 people and seizing 240 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.
Abbas said that based on a binding international agreement, he would revive the weakened Palestinian Authority, implement long-awaited reforms and hold presidential and parliamentary elections, which were suspended after Hamas won in 2006 and later pushed the PA out of Gaza.
He said the PA had abided by all the peace deals signed with Israel since the 1993 Oslo Accord and the understandings that followed over the years but that Israel had reneged on its pledges to end the occupation.
Asked whether he would risk holding elections given the possibility that Hamas could win as it did in 2006, he said: “Whoever wins wins, these will be democratic elections.”
Abbas said he had planned to hold elections in April 2021 but the European Union envoy told him before the due date that Israel was objecting to voting in East Jerusalem so he was forced to call it off.
He insisted that there would not be elections without East Jerusalem, saying the PA held three rounds of elections in the past that included East Jerusalem before Israel imposed the ban.
Israel captured Arab East Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war. It later annexed it, declaring the whole of the city as its capital, a move not recognized internationally. Palestinians want East Jerusalem as the capital of their future state.
Abbas did not give a concrete vision of a post-war plan discussed with US officials under which the PA would take over control of the strip, home for 2.3 million people. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said that Israel would not accept rule over Gaza by the Palestinian Authority as it stands.
“The United States tells us that it supports a two-state solution, that Israel is not allowed to occupy Gaza, to keep security control of Gaza or to expropriate land from Gaza,” he said in reference to a plan floated by Israel to establish a security zone in Gaza after the war.
“America doesn’t force Israel to implement what it says.”
He said the PA was still present in Gaza as an institution and still pays monthly salaries and expenses estimated at $140 million for employees, pensioners and for needy families. The PA still has three ministers present in Gaza, he added.
“We need rehabilitation, we need big support to return to Gaza,” Abbas said.
“Gaza today is not the Gaza that you know. Gaza was destroyed, its hospitals, its schools, its infrastructure, its buildings, its roads and mosques were destroyed. There is nothing left. When we return we need resources, Gaza needs reconstruction.”
“The United States which fully supports Israel bears the responsibility of what is happening in the enclave,” Abbas said.
“It is the only power that is capable of ordering Israel to stop the war and fulfil its obligations, but unfortunately it doesn’t. America is an accomplice of Israel.”
